


brokenness is a form of art

by leopoldjamesfitz



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, black widow/winter soldier au verse, me about this verse: something always brings me back to you - it never takes too long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 12:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17283992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leopoldjamesfitz/pseuds/leopoldjamesfitz
Summary: He might be half the man she knew when they met, but he was smarter than that. Hydra had taught him the ways of espionage and when he’d taught them to her, she’d kept every single one close and tattooed them on her very soul.It had become her life. Slipping from one existence to another until the lines blurred.Inhale. Exhale.





	brokenness is a form of art

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amazingjemma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazingjemma/gifts).



> hi olesya, the undeniable best person i've met in this year or the last. i have a plethora of things that i would love to say to you, but none of them make sense when i try to put them all together. thank you, as always, for being my rock, my ear, and my friend. you're a lovely human being, and even lovelier for keeping up with my damn hare brain when it comes to writing. and of course, i couldn't go without mentioning our rps, or more importantly, thanking you for dealing with me when it comes to them. 
> 
> And of course, speaking of rps, here's a piece of a verse you drew out long before you met me. I've done my own modifications, because I couldn't ask you questions without arousing suspicion, but I hope that you love it nonetheless.
> 
> Happy New Year, lovely. ♥

Inhale.

It’s a trick, she realizes; the ability to hold your breath is all a trick of the mind and if you can do it for the right amount of time at the perfect moment, the world is at your fingertips. She thinks she heard that years before, when she was young and fresh and careless; but that seems like a lifetime ago.

She watches her target from atop the roof. She’s not sure if he’s aware that she’s watching him, but she hasn’t caught him stealing wayward glances in her direction. He’s usually more careful than that, but maybe in his old age, he’s losing some of his grace.

Exhale.

Jemma clenches her jaw when he dips down an alleyway, just out of her sight, and she admonishes herself for not expecting that maneuver as she slides down a drain pipe and follows behind him. Close enough for comfort, but far enough away that it seems like random chance.

In her ear, Bobbi is imploring her to keep her distance and not scare him. Like she’s worried of that possibility.

He could certainly outrun her, they’d figured out that before, but he wasn’t as sly as she was. While most of the things she had learned had been from his hand, she’d learned quite a few tricks of her own over the years. He does not frighten her, and she does not think she frightens him. No matter how fragile his mind might be.

The alleyway is dark when she approaches, and in the dim twilight, it’s hard to pick out any shapes at all. It leads out onto another street and she slides up against the shadows, trying to pick out any hidden places he might be hiding.

Just because she _thinks_ he hadn’t caught her spying doesn’t mean that he hasn’t.

He might be half the man she knew when they met, but he was smarter than that. Hydra had taught him the ways of espionage and when he’d taught them to her, she’d kept every single one close and tattooed them on her very soul.

It had become her life. Slipping from one existence to another until the lines blurred.

Inhale. Exhale.

She proceeded down the alleyway.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t remember anything.

There is a beginning, a middle, and an unfortunate end to his story and he remembers none of it. Not even a splinter. There’s something within him, clawing to get out, but no matter how hard he tries, he cannot give it what it wants.

The Soldier only knows screaming.

It’s been seventy-four days, thirteen hours, four minutes and thirty-two – thirty-three – seconds since Hydra had fallen. Since he’d fallen through the cracks.

He knows that somewhere, someone is watching. Someone is looking for him. A man of his calibre, of their design, he is not destined to live free.

The Soldier does not believe that evil can be defeated that easily and wonders endlessly if it is possible for him to ever be free at all.

Free seems like such a foreign concept to a man who has no concept of who he is anymore.

Scotland isn’t the place that he thought it would be. He still does not understand what drew him closer to it. He doesn’t think he’s ever been here before. It’s quiet and it’s peaceful and the shop owner smiles despite it all and gives him a hello that he’s yet to retaliate but every morning, it’s the same smile, the same hello and the same cheerfulness.

The Soldier does not know how he feels about it all, but it does not make his skin crawl the way it would have with the previous people he had dealt with. And that is fine. For a moment, everything is fine.

He’s out too late, he knows, and there’s a part of him that reminds him again and again, like a loop he can’t break, that he needs to go to Sheltish. There is an apartment there that has the minimal items that he owns and it’s safe there because the front door has four locks and the back door has three and there is only one window. That is in the bedroom. The Soldier does not sleep there for obvious reasons.

But he is out, and he is restless, and he does not know why.

(That’s a complete lie.

The Soldier had woken up earlier that afternoon, in a sweat, clinging to the blanket he’d covered himself with before settling down just an hour before, with _his_ name on his lips.

The Soldier does not know who Sergeant Leopold James Fitz is.

He is a man in a museum. A hero. He had a beginning, and a middle, and then an end. But the dead cannot live on.

The Soldier is not Sergeant Fitz.)

He counts his steps as he turns abruptly and walks down the alleyway. There’s an almost glimmer of a memory in the back of his head. Blonde hair and piercing eyes, a fist made of almost lead.

But The Soldier blinks, and it is gone.

He has mapped this place completely, and he knows every route there is to bring him back to Sheltish. This alleyway isn’t one. It will take him longer to get there, and he is not sure that is the best approach.

The Soldier has always liked order. But he feels imbalanced and restless and there is a voice in his head that is getting louder and louder, begging and pleading to _remember_.

Remember what?

The Soldier blinks. The voice is gone again.

He turns left out of the alleyway, back in the right direction to Sheltish. It is getting colder. His human arm hurts and he clenches his fist, for the first time realizing how cold his hand and arm are. He must return to warmth.

He clenches his jaw and nods, turning left again as he slips down an alleyway, swearing he catches a glimpse of someone coming out of the alleyway, but when he turns to look back, there’s nothing there, not even footprints in the snow beside his own.

The Soldier nods, dismissing this and moves down the length of the alleyway with ease, thinking of the apartment and the leftover food the shop owner had given him that morning, promising he’d adore it. (He had.)

His belly rumbles and he sighs, pressing on.

* * *

 

He leads her to a small apartment building. On the outside, it looks… unpleasant. The walls are stained and the roof looks sunken in on one part, but she understands the allure.

It is quiet, and it does not draw attention, and if he remembered the lessons that he’d taught her, she knew he would be the first to remind her that espionage wasn’t always fancy dress and fake smiles.

Sometimes, it was remaining unseen in a very public area. And this place certainly did it.

 _I’m coming up behind you_. Bobbi said through the coms in her ear. Jemma clenches her fist, fighting a shiver as it slides up her spine. She grits her teeth together and sighs. _What is this place_? She asks, and it takes Jemma a moment to realize that she hears it both from her com and from the brutish woman standing beside her.

Hunter appears from her left, and the three of them stand together, staring at the ruins of the apartment building. He says nothing, which for Hunter, is almost a miracle. She watches from the corner of his eye as his fingers twitch, and she knows that he is eager to reach for his arrow. To load himself up.

He and The Soldier had not had the best last meeting. Hunter was lucky it was only his ribs cracked, and not his skull.

But they cannot attack The Soldier. He is not to be held responsible for his actions. He is a walking target and they know that. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s orders are to take him in safely and let their analysts help him in any way that is possible.

But The Soldier does not remember the man he used to be; Jemma never knew that man. She only knew the man they’d forged. The man who had taught her everything and shared her bed on more than on occasion. He’d been quick and sly, though never as great as her, and it had taken her years to shake off the impression he’d left on her.

But Bobbi does.

Bobbi remembers The Soldier being a shy, kind man named Leopold Fitz, though he’d always hated the name Leopold and begged her to call him Fitz. His family was wealthier than Bobbi’s, though his father had died when he was young and his mother died before he’d turned eighteen. He’d taken care of Bobbi throughout their years together, through every illness that knocked on her door and implored her closer to death.

Bobbi had been born prematurely and had been a sick little thing before the serum. But he’d been there every time, even the times that were her own fault, only judging her teasingly.

They might have married if he’d survived the war. If she hadn’t died it in herself. It would have made sense, or at least it would have been expected of them. She’d learned that much from the research that she’d done on both pre-serum Bobbi Morse and the information she could find on Sergeant Leopold Fitz before his death.

Jemma could never have seen them that way, though a part of her wonders if it weren’t the possessive part of her that thought of the Soldier as hers, which was ridiculous.

She cracked her neck and shoved those thoughts away as a shiver ran down her spine. It was Scotland in the middle of December, and instead of being somewhere far away and far warmer, they were tracking him.

There was absolutely no guarantee that he would come with them peacefully, or at all. He held no regard for anyone. As far as anyone could tell, he knew nothing of his life beyond the three-or-so months that he’d been free from Hydra after it’s fall.

She knew that S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted him close, wanted him to be a pawn if Hydra rose up again. She hates this, but knows that there is not much for her to do about it. She can’t rise up against the organization that saved her. Not for anybody. Not for him.

“He’s in there,” Jemma says after a long moment of silence. It’d been five minutes, maybe ten. She’s freezing. She wants to be in a warm bath already. “And if I’m right, it’s the apartment in the far left corner.”

Hunter turns toward her, quirking an eyebrow, but Bobbi doesn’t shift. “Do you have like, super hearing or something that you forgot to mention to us?”

“The power of deduction,” she deadpans. “If I were on the run, and I have been, I wouldn’t go to the brightly lit, multi-window apartment in the first floor, or the one with the sinking roof. The first one puts you in the view of everyone, but the second one is too obvious. People _expect_ you to take what you can get when you are on the run. No, the one on the far left corner is practically invisible from the outside, and probably the same on the inside. It’s one that most people would pass by and not even notice it was there at all.”

Hunter snorted. “ _Most_ people,” he mumbled, shaking his head. His fingers twitch again.

Jemma just beams, and looks up at the single paned window at the side of the house, facing away from the street, and looks back and forth between her companions. “Most people weren’t trained by The Soldier himself,” she reminds them, and then moves toward the side of the building with ease.

 

* * *

 

The Soldier is almost asleep when he hears it.

A creak in a floorboard, just down the hallway. He is the only person on this floor. He made sure of it tenfold.

But there is a creak, and he is awake.

His adrenaline begins to kick in and he sits up, looking blindly through the darkness as he clenches and unclenches the fist of his metal arm, trying desperately to catch his breath. All he can think is that they have found him. They have come to get him.

He needs to get out of there.

He collects the small rucksack of items together in a rush, no doubt leaving something behind. He’s had a back up plan, a way out since the day he’d found this place. It all comes together too quickly, and his head is spinning and he can’t wake up fast enough but he moves toward the attic door and pulls himself up anyway, closing the door behind him. In a moment, he moves toward the fallen roof, and the hole the rain had punctured, forgetting to breathe.

But when he pulls himself up, there is someone on the roof. He hadn’t heard them.

She smiles at him, though there isn’t any friendliness in the movement. He tightens his grip on the rucksack and pulls himself up quickly, stepping backwards to create distance between them.

“We’re just trying to help you,” the woman reasons, and he knows this spiel. He’s heard it before, he thinks. It seems familiar. He waits for it – the next part. But it doesn’t come. “You don’t have to trust us, but we’re not Hydra.”

The woman pauses, keeping her eye on him as she lifts her hand to her ear and presses her lips together, as though listening to something. “I’ve got him. He’s on the roof. Nice call, Bobbi.”

 _Bobbi_ , he thinks, sounding out the word. It seems both familiar and unfamiliar all at the same time.

The Soldier takes another step back and looks over the edge. It’s too far to jump, and he needs to be on the other side to get the drain pipe down. But she is blocking his way out.

She is tiny, and he thinks that if he tried hard enough, he could push her over the edge easily and move to safety without a second glance. But there is something stopping him from doing that. He is not sure what.

He swallows hard and pushes his lips together in a thin line. He is not trapped. He will not go back. He would rather jump over the edge of the building and break something than be within Hydra’s grasp again.

But before he has a chance to move, or to say anything, the woman picks up a tiny gun and shoots him, but the pain isn’t there. Instead, The Soldier feels sleepy again. He looks up at her as he collapses, still holding onto the straps of the rucksack, and feels his eyes close against their will.

He must escape.

 

* * *

 

She watches him the entire ride back to the compound. The level of dendrotoxin in his system is lethal. He should be dead, but his breathing and the times that he does seem to wake up before he gets pulled back under tells her otherwise. His body is fighting it.

They know as much about his physiology as they do about her own, as they do about Bobbi’s. He’s just as much as mystery as she is.

And yet, he’s living and he’s breathing and they don’t think for one moment that he’s doing either of those things as the man he was.

That is why there is multiple armed agents around him, and why he is strapped with vibranium steel to the bed that he lays on, which is also made of the same alloy. He is a threat. He is a menace. He could kill them all in a moment without thinking. That is how he was trained.

That’s how she was trained. But Nick Fury had found her before it was too late.

He twitches again, presumably in his sleep, and one of the armed men angle his gun toward him, but The Soldier does not rise.

He does not rise for three days after S.H.I.E.L.D. captures him, and does not move for another week after that.

Fury begins to wonder what’s wrong, and as they stand in front of him, he eyes all of them carefully. Hunter is the only one who doesn’t have any real affiliation with The Soldier. He would, normally, be free to go, because if they were looking for a guinea pig, he wouldn’t be the first candidate. Or the second. Or the third, really.

But he is still there, and they are all under the scrutiny of Fury’s one eye as he paces back and forth. The man is supposed to be dead. The Soldier was said to have killed him. They are the only three who know that Fury is still alive.

“What’s wrong with him?” He asks, his voice irritated. “I expected a lot more resilience, if we’re being honest.”

What Fury does not know about The Soldier is that he doesn’t have any of that left.

The room remain silent, because they don’t know what to say to that. They don’t know why a man forged from evil has given up. Why his body still runs even though he hasn’t had any of the food they’ve provided for him. His rucksack had contained nothing of value, and had been given back to him when he’s asked for that.

The Soldier seems like a model prisoner, even though S.H.I.E.L.D. refuses to call the cell he’s in that.

Fury grunts, looking toward Captain America herself. “Bobbi?” He asks, raising one eyebrow.

Bobbi falters, because there’s nothing that hasn’t already been said to him a dozen times over. “The Fitz I knew was quiet. Reserved, but he was friendly.” She replied quietly, taking a glance over at the monitor that showed the inside of the room that he was in before swallowing hard.

Fury flicked his gaze toward Jemma, and wordlessly she nodded. “The conversations we did have were mostly quick, and in Russian.” She told him, a slight smirk crossing her cheeks. Even his tired look didn’t change that. “But we’ve tried both approaches with him, and he’s not responding to any of it.”

He refused to acknowledge the people who came into the room, in fact. Didn’t look over when the door opened. Didn’t turn around. Just laid and faced the ceiling or the wall.

Jemma thought of her Soldier; the man who warmed her heart and her bed on multiple occasions. There hadn’t been romance in their courtship, but there’d been passion and light and she still remembered almost every thing that he’d whispered into her skin as they came together and fell apart. But he wasn’t this man.

“So who is he?” Fury asked after a long moment of silence, as though reading her thoughts. “Is he a threat, or an ally?”

No one had an answer.

 

* * *

 

Bobbi exits the room, looking tired and worn. Jemma knows that it is difficult for her. Since Fitz – The Soldier – had shown up and attacked them, it had been like a piece of her past had been within her reach and yet, it had been completely unattainable. Jemma also knows that Bobbi had been trailing him every day since he’d slipped away after pulling her out of the river.

Bobbi wanted answers, and so did Jemma, but they both wanted different ones.

Jemma grabs her shoulder as she walks by, squeezing it. Bobbi stops in her spot, offering her a tired smile before she moves out of the room and down the hallway. When the blonde is out of her sight, Jemma looks toward the door and exhales slowly, opening it up.

The Soldier – her Soldier – sits on the bed, holding what appears to be a picture in his hands very delicately. His eyebrows are scrunched together as he runs his thumb along it, though never saying a word. He doesn’t even look up when the door slams behind her, but he never had before.

Jemma sits on the chair in the middle of the room, the one that was bolted to the ground, stealing a glance of the picture he holds in his hand. It is newly printed, but an older shot – a screen capture, maybe, of a video she swears that she’s seen before, but can’t place where.

He’s mouthing something that looks a lot like ‘me.’

“Hi,” she starts, looking down at the folder she’s holding in her hands. He doesn’t look up, but she’s not surprised by this anymore. He seems transfixed, but she knows that he is listening. She can tell by the sideways glances that she gets from time to time. Like he’s sizing her up. “We’ve met before. I’m not sure if you remember me.”

“You shot me,” he says plainly, reaching to point toward the side where she had. It’s long healed, and there’d been no sign of a wound, but she freezes. This is the first time he’s spoken since they’d taken him in.

A part of her wants to run and tell Fury, but she levels him with a glance and nods. “I did.” She tells him plainly, because she believes that the truth is important. “But not with a gun. Not the ones that you are used to, Sergeant Fitz.”

The Soldier glances up at her, as if reacting to that name, but dips his head as he moves back to stare at the picture. He presses his lips together in a fine line, but says nothing.

The picture in his hand is of Bobbi and himself, she knows. Back when she was still freshly minted Captain America and they’d fought together with the Howling Commandos. She doesn’t have to take a second glance to know where he is focusing, either.

Jemma sighs, writing his words down on the top of the emptied sheet she is carrying. They don’t give her a list of questions to ask him anymore, thinking it futile to try and interview him. Especially because, up until this very moment, he hasn’t said a word.

“That is your name,” she asks, lifting her gaze up to cast over him again. “Isn’t it?”

The Soldier doesn’t react, though she knew it was a reach. He hadn’t reacted to her Russian when they’d first met a few weeks prior. Or her English now. He barely reacts to himself.

“The name they gave me is The Soldier.” He tells her, after a long moment, taking the picture between his fingertips and holding it up. “I don’t remember him.” He admits, and points to the image of himself in the picture.”

Jemma nods, unsurprised. Though she is not sure what Hydra took from him, she imagines that they needed to break him before they could put him back together. A part of her cracks, remembering the way her own mother had broke her when she was a child. Again and again. Making her learn her dances, making her learn how to hold a gun before she got sick of teaching her herself and sent her away.

Hydra wanted broken people. They wanted that power.

“What do you remember, then?” She asked cautiously, but The Soldier has already shut down.

He doesn’t say anything else, that session. Or for the rest of his time there. Instead, he holds the picture back into the same position he’d been in, and goes numb.

Jemma walks away, feeling much the same.

 

* * *

 

Three days later, in the middle of the night, The Soldier disappears. The picture does, too. There’s footage of him leaving, but never attacking anyone. He slips through the cracks, and disappears into the night.

Three months later, just as the cusp of the Sokovia Accords begins and the attack on the United Nations building happens, he’s spotted in Scotland again. A smaller town. Perthshire. But his face is all over the news, claiming that he’d been the one responsible for the attack on the UN.

Three months, and two days later, the three of them are facing him once again as he finds himself locked in a vice in a shed in the middle of nowhere. He’s tired, then, resigned, and frightened. Three things she’d never seen from her Soldier before.

But he’s not the same man she knew when she was a young girl. He’d been designed and forged to be that man. That was a curse to him. Just as it was a curse to her.

Four months later, people forget the name _The Winter Soldier_ again as it dissolves into the news. The Sokovia Accords are signed, the Avengers dissemble and for the first time, The Soldier - Sergeant Fitz is free.

And he remembers everything.

 

* * *

 

She finds him on a bridge some six months later. Winter had hit early this year, and the snow crunches underneath her feet, but he doesn’t look up. Bobbi had told her where she could find him, and at first she hadn’t understood why.

Not until his gruff voice came through the silence between them. “Milaya moya,” he called out quietly, and she froze.

Jemma pressed her lips together in a thin line, forcing control over her voice when she murmured, “you remember.”

It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. Her blood felt as though it had frozen in her veins. Since the war between Bobbi and Daisy had started and ended, things had been quiet. He’d disappeared and came back out of it seemingly unharmed and unknown. Bobbi had spoken to him on mutual occasions, but she’d never made any mentions that he’d remembered her.

Fitz – she’d gotten used to calling him that, even in her head – turned to look at her over his shoulder, from where he sat on the edge of the building, and nodded. And then he turned back, taking one glance at the skyline before he stood up.

She always forgot how much taller he was than her.

Jemma watched his every movement, on alert. She didn’t know him, not anymore. But a part of her wanted to.

(Wherever that had come from, she was unsure.)

“You were young,” he commented, not completely looking toward her. His gaze waivered just away, while he swallowed. “They all were.”

Jemma nodded. “Impressionable, I think the word they used was,” she remarked, a flare of irritation growing within her at the thought. The men who had taken her, the men her mother had let take her, they weren’t good. They wanted women they could break. And they’d broken her.

They remained silent as she sidled up to him, both staring out at the skyline. She wasn’t sure why he found this place comforting. The buzz of the city, the business, it all drove her insane. She saw him watching her out of the corner of her eye, but she said nothing, crossing her arms over her chest with a soft sigh.

Around them, snow had begun to fall.

“How much do you remember?” She asked him, blinking the snow away from her lashes.

Fitz straightened up, and she watched as his adam’s apple bobbed and for a long moment, he remained silent; frigid. And then, all at once, as air rushed out of his lungs he breathed, “everything.”

She moved between them, grabbing for his hand. A part of her wondered where the urge had come from, because never in all of her years had she shared intimacy like this with a person, but it felt natural. He didn’t pull his hand away, and she felt warmer about that.

“Me too,” she admitted after a moment, and caught his gaze.

There were unspeakable horrors reflecting in his eyes, all the things they did, all the things that their handlers had made them do. And yet, the blood that was spilled was on their hands. Not anybody else’s. That had been something she’d struggled with every day since S.H.I.E.L.D. had saved her.

“I’m Jemma Simmons,” she told him plainly. “That is the name I chose. That was my decision.” She shuddered a little at the memory. Simmons had been so plain, but it was a name she’d earned. “But you are Leopold Fitz. That is the name they took away from you. And it is your responsibility to take it back, if you choose to do so.”

He nodded, and turned away from her, exhaling slowly. “Does it ever get easier?”

Jemma smiled, turning to look in the same direction as he was. It was the first time that she noticed Daisy’s tower in the distance and understood. “No,” she confessed quietly, solemn in her speaking. “But one day, you might be able to forgive yourself, and that’s close enough.”


End file.
